


Rocket Man

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, twinganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 15:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16621520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: Pidge said that Shiro is considered a hero in her home and Sam Holt claimed that Shiro had saved his life in space - but canon never told us why or how.  Well - let's find out.  Set in the same verse as Two Minutes and I See A Mirror.  Shiro and his twin brother Ryou.





	1. Chapter 1

He was drifting, caught somewhere between waking and sleep, eternity pressing down on him like a blanket, heavy in his chest, star song in his ears, separate from the drift of his body. Somewhere far away the waves washed up on a shore and he wondered what color they were. What kind of crystals they were made of. Ice or diamonds. Piano music filtered in slow, tinny with distance and he smiled before his mind even rose through sleep to waking, inhaling deep, forgetting the water and the star song, even if eternity still pressed down heavy inside his chest.

“Morning, Ry,” he murmured, voice thick and gravel, swallowing and wincing as he raised one hand automatically and then the other, working his fingers to get the pins and needles feeling out of the right one.

“Morning, Starshine,” his twin’s voice came back a moment later, thin over the distance and in the background Elton John sang that it was lonely out in space and hit the bridging high note of a timeless flight.

“What time is it?”

“Here or there?” a clink and Shiro didn’t have to open his eyes, content to leave them closed and picture his twin sitting at the com desk in Garrison Command with a new mug of that awful crap they called coffee, Rocket Man playing in the background where it had been turned on just for Shiro’s sake. 

“Oh dark thirty here,” Shiro stretched carefully, paying attention to the twinge in his right elbow and starting the exercises to work it loose again. "It’s always oh dark thirty here.“

Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone…

"Its three. In the morning,” Ryou informed from his station back on Earth. “Just finished a project and figured I’d come check on you.”

“Got the booster fuel ratio figured out?”

“Kuso, Tak. That’s the third time they’ve exploded on me. I’m all out of eyebrows.”

That made him laugh, dry in his throat and he finally opened his eyes and unstrapped himself from the ‘bed’, body floating upward with a push as he reached for a water packet.

“That’s a lot of eyebrow,” he teased his twin. "Have Adam take a picture of you so I can see it when I get back.“

Ryou snorted something uncomplimentary and even with months of distance between them, Shiro knew he took a drink from his mug at the same time Shiro inserted the straw and took his first sip of water.

"Nah, you’re not here to see it, you don’t get to tease about it. The price you pay for being a Rocket Man.” Ryou sang the last two words along with Elton and Shiro relaxed and exhaled. Let them both relax for a minute and than softly said:

“It’s good to hear you.”

“Gotta keep you properly Earthed. That’s why there’re two of us right? One for stars and one for home. Keeps both of us in orbit.”

“Yeah,” Shiro raised his face to look out the ship’s window, saw the distant light of stars and the great dark Nothing that came before them. Raised his hand and pressed it to the glass.

“So what’s for breakfast?” his twin’s voice pulled him back and he exhaled a laugh, felt relief at the anchor that always seemed to know when to be there and sorted through the packets. "Looks like oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal with dried fruit or oatmeal.“

"Oh! Go for the oatmeal!”

“You’re a jerk,” Shiro laughed as he plucked out one of the packets and pushed off to coast to the water dispenser to add the necessary liquid.

“You know you love me.”

“Always. But you still owe me dinner when I get back. I haven’t forgotten how bad I beat you at Uno before I went up.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a cheap date. Garrison mac and cheese,” his brother waved him verbally off and Shiro absently hooked a shoe under a handle to hold himself in place while he sucked oatmeal out of a plastic bag. Ah, the high life. Rocket Man was apparently on loop where Ryou was and Shiro let himself enjoy it and listening to his brother try to hit the high notes of it. It felt good, as if he was just in the other room. Shiro was used to long missions and he’d even taken a few of them on his own like he was now. It didn’t bother him. But - eternity was a vast thing to have staring at you without blinking for days and months on end. Ryou reminded him of simple, easy, solid things.

“You pick up crew today,” Ryou reminded him, as if he’d forget, and Shiro nodded before humming to answer. 

“Right. Europa crew off of Callisto.” It was the reason he was running alone. Most Garrison ships ran a three man crew but Shiro had dropped off his at the asteroid belt station. Space and fuel were limited and he was retrieving the entire Europa crew. It was going to be a crowded flight back to Mars but the rules were strict about how long crews could stay on the Jupiter moons. Even with the radiation shielding it was a dangerous risk every time they put people out there and why most of the Callisto station was run entirely automated for the teams that came out to work there and on Europa’s new site.

“Did you brush your teeth?” Ryou cut in. hiiii iiiiii i gh as a kite by then’ sang Elton. "You know how bad space funk mouth is.“

"Right, right,” but Shiro still tucked his empty water and oatmeal pack into the trash and pushed off for the cabinet on the other side. "Its not like they’re going to care considering they’ll smell like space funk themselves. Callisto isn’t exactly high end.“

A thump Shiro knew was Ryou putting his boots on the com desk and he felt sorry for whoever ended up there next considering some of the gunk Ryou walked through in his engineering bay. 

"Nah, but you’ll care and spend your entire time worrying about it if you don’t.”

“Jerk,” Shiro commented, getting down the powder and listening to his brother snort. They both knew it was true.

“Looks like you’ve got a two hour ETA. Plenty of time to get your photographic smile pearly white.”

Shiro paused, tipped his head and rested an arm on the side of the wall to anchor himself.

“You’ll be on the whole time?”

It came out softer than he’d meant it to and he mentally cursed himself for letting the weakness leak through.

“Sure,” Ryou’s reply was easy and relaxed. Sure indication he’d caught on to Shiro’s unvoiced need. Shiro shook his head and went back to the tooth powder.

“Pick a different song at least. I’m up now. Give me something with a bit more jazz.”

He should have known better than to ask. An hour later Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf was blasting through the speakers and Shiro was pretending he wasn’t rocking out to oldies in deep space while he moved through his stretches and required exercises.


	2. Chapter 2

“…..eed help….”

“Ry, hang on,” Shiro pushed off from his seat, reaching for the dials of the communications board and grateful for his long arms as his brother’s voice snapped off halfway through his story about his student’s latest engineering challenge. At his back he could still feel his twin though, like a heavy waiting presence, suddenly shut off from his talkative entertaining mode into something more serious. There was no reason for Shiro to interrupt him that wasn’t important. Shiro coaxed a bit more into the internal antenna of the ship, carefully, minutely moving the dial to search for the signal. And then:

“If anyone can hear us, this is Captain Holt of the Europa Expedition. Our retrieval craft has been damaged and we’re outside Io’s Plasma Torus. Andromache, if you can hear us, we need immediate evac. I repeat, this is Captain Holt of the Europa Expedition. Our retrieval craft is headed for the Io line. We need help. Please.”

It was Shiro’s turn to swear.

“Ry, I’m picking up a distress signal from the Europa expedition. Patching it through to you.”

Shiro could literally feel the change in his body, like going from the soft warmth of your bedroom to the sharp ice of an outside winter’s day, everything suddenly clear and cut in straight lines. He flipped toggles, built in training of hours and hours in emergency simulators kicking in almost without thought, boosting the signal. Distantly he was aware of sound over his brother’s channel, indication that Ryou was snapping awake too, already on his feet and calling in the emergency response squad. Space was deadly. The simple mistakes that cost you nothing on Earth mean a long slow death out here and one wire worked loose went from an inconvenience back home to the end of everything in the cold dark. If the Callisto crew was in trouble, they were in deep trouble. There was no other kind to be this far out into eternity.

“Europa Expedition, this is Takashi Shirogane of the Andromache. I’m your ride home and I’m inbound. I’ve got you patched through to HQ. Please confirm your location and the status of your crew as well as the condition of your craft.”

So polite. It helped stabilize Shiro’s racing mind, the proper politeness of the exchanges, protical giving his racing mind structure to hold on to and build on.

“Oh thank God,” Holt’s voice came back immediately, salted with static but still there. "Shiro.“ There was real relief in his voice and Shiro almost flinched. He knew Captain Holt, not well but he’d taken a few of his classes and served under him on some large squad missions. The way the man’s voice sounded now - he believed Shiro could save him. Shiro could hear it in his voice, in the way he said the name like a prayer. Because it was Shiro. Under the weight of that, Shiro’s shoulders threatened to curve inward at the responsibility- and then he pulled in a deep breath of recycled dead air and straightened to as full attention as he could while twisted between the pilot’s chair and the comm panel.

He could carry that weight. Because he had to. There was no one else. The Europa crew, and Sam, were entirely reliant on him as of this very moment.

"I’m on my way, Professor,” he promised it. "I’ll be there before you know it.“

"We’ll be ready for pick up,” Holt’s voice was strained but he was trying. “Leifsdottir is gone. Collins and Chan are here with me. Baker’s in a med pouch, he needs attention as soon as possible. Our ship destabilized leaving Europa. We’re caught in Jupiter’s gravity, but its the Io line that’s our immediate danger. Our shielding won’t hold through an entire pass through it.”

“Roger that. Command, you get all that?”

“Received,” it was Iverson’s gruff voice, gruffer than usual with the remains of an interrupted sleep in it over the comm, tinny with the distance. "Stay on course, Shirogane. We’re seeing about pulling an extract plan for the Europa crew.“

"Taka,” Ryou’s voice cut in. “Burn two Ts of fuel. You’re not going to make it to them in time at your current drift. You can spare it and we’ve got to make your ship as light as we can.”

“Shirogane, that’s not cleared yet,” Iverson snapped but Shiro was already shifting back to his seat and strapping down, flipping the toggles to feed the fuel into his engines. His faith in his twin was complete. If Ryou said a ship could do something, it could no matter what the specs said.

“Starting burn now.”

“Shirogane!”

But he felt the roar through the ship as the engines warmed and then burst to life. It was a risk. Of course it was a risk. He had spare fuel for emergencies but not much and he was already going to burn through his allotted safety level on any spare maneuvers he was going to need to pull to catch the Europa crew. If he didn’t have enough to finish - he’d be joining them in their trip through Io’s plasma torus, and that deadly ‘cloud’, circling the small volcanic moon, was more than enough radiation to fry them all and then some.

The pressure from the rocket boost pushed him back in his seat and he closed his eyes and accepted it. Let it inside him. Swallowed it down into his chest. It was gravity and the pull of the stars he’d felt all his life, it was speed and control and elemental energy, it was what he had longed for deep in his soul all his life, the need to cut through the ultimate dark and the freedom and power to do so. He let it swallow him now, consume him entirely and fill his chest with its weight. When he opened is eyes again his hands were steady and his breathing was level. His racing mind steadied under the weight and went still.

“Catching a boost from Callisto,” he reported, using the subtle gravity of the moon to slingshot his ship faster toward the growing bulk of Jupiter taking up more and more of his horizon. "2 Ts burned in 3 - 2 - 1. Fuel burn complete.“

Automatic he reached up, cut the engines. "Commander Holt, what’s your ETA to entering the torus?”

“We don’t have engines. We’re working on getting power back to one now. Even with that though its still fifteen minutes at absolute best. Without it, we’re looking at eight.”

“Roger that. Command, what’s our extract plan?”

He’d been aware of noise in the background, the usual milling sounds of voices raised and tight, of people moving and things moving and the static of people being called in the middle of the night to wake up for the emergency. It wouldn’t be the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. But there was a small plaque on the outside of the building with a list of names you only added to if you were lost in space. Shiro was determined not to let Holt and his crew have a place on it.

His hands tightened on the controls and he coaxed every trick he knew to maneuver more speed and a quicker passage out of the ship.

“Taka, I’m boosting the diagnostic signal we’re getting from the extract craft through Andromache now. Looks like their starboard side is gone.” The way his twin’s voice said it over the connection told Shiro that whatever had happened to the craft, it hadn’t been a mild malfunction. "You’re going to have to connect on the port side. It’s not meant for that but there’s a pressure tube we can blow. You can snug the ship up against it there and get them that way. There’s no clamp so you’re going to have to ride it hard to keep the ships close enough until everyone’s through.“ A sharp sound, laminated plastic and Shiro realized how bad things were if they were breaking out the old archive blueprints instead of calling up schematics on the computer.

"Roger that." They were asking an awful lot. Even when both ships had stabilizing thrusters, a ship to ship connection without clamps was risky and hard to maintain. Shiro had done it before, one of the few pilots that ever had outside of training simulations but this wasn’t an easy trip around the moon either. There was going to be a lot of interference. Ryou grunted at him over the comm and it was only because Shiro knew his brother that he even heard it.

"You got that,” Ryou was almost dismissive, faith in his twin’s ability absolute. "That’s not the tricky part though, Tak.“ Ryou didn’t even pause, just dove straight into it. "You’ll be in the Line by that point. There’s nothing we can do that’s going to get you there faster. How deep inside it depends on whether Commander Holt’s team gets their engine online.”

“Ship’s shields will only hold for ten minutes, that’s in, extract and out included.”

“Twenty three,” Ryou corrected and from the sounds behind him not a lot of the rest of the people in the room agreed. Ryou’s voice went hard. "I swear, Taka, I can get you twenty three minutes to the dot out of Andromache’s shields. Not a second more but I can get you that. I worked on her before you went up. I know her. She’ll give me that.“

The weight had settled back in Shiro’s chest again, heavy over his brain. He wouldn’t have trusted anyone else, not even the ship’s designer. One second off - and the radiation and debris would shred through the hull of the ship and space him. There were a lot of ways to die in space. Boiling in radiation as you were sanded down to your bones was probably one of the worst.

”Ani?“

Shiro smiled. Felt the pain down through his chest.

"I’m right here, otouto. Tell me what I have to do to get the shields aligned for you.”

“Engineering. Call up the diagnostic screen for the shields. I’m going to walk you through a reconfigure sequence.” Ryou’s voice was steady again, after the small waiver of his brother’s title, determined and hard. No one could catch a mechanical crisis and strangle it into submission with stubbornness like Ryou. The tight band around Taka’s chest ease, just a little, and he unstrapped after double checking his trajectory to push off for the engineer’s seat, pulling himself down by the monitor’s screen to start typing.

‘I’m in. Go, Ry.“

Somewhere in the background someone was not happy with Ryou’s decisions and there was loud arguing going on between them and Iverson but that was all background noise and Ryou’s voice stayed steady and determined.

"Like fuck are we going to lose this one, Tak,” was Ryou’s only acknowledgment of it, sharp, hard and fierce before he went back to his level instructions and Shiro took that determination and anger against fate and fed it into his own, building off of what his twin gave him to steel his own surety.

Commander Holt and the Callisto team were coming home.

Shiro, with his brother at his back, was going to make sure of it.


	3. Chapter 3

This was it.

They’d done everything they could. As much as they could be prepared for this in the time they’d been given - they were. Now, he knew it just came down to him. 

Win or lose, the mission was out of the team’s hands, and entirely - and only - in his.

“Tak, you’ve got this,” Ryou’s voice came over the comm, already starting to break up as the proximity to the radiation from Io’s plasma torus started to interfere. Steady. Sure.

And even if Shiro knew to a certain extent his brother was faking the confidence for his own sake - he also knew that Ryou wouldn’t send him in if he didn’t, with his entire being, believe Shiro would be coming back out. He pulled air deep into his lungs and flexed his fingers. For just a moment - they spasmed - and then they cleared and he brought them to rest on the stick of the Andromache.

“I can do this,” he agreed, voice a perfect match for his twin’s.

Commander Holt’s last transmission had come seven minutes ago, as his disabled ship passed into the Line. He was counting on Shiro coming for him and Shiro wasn’t going to let him, or the man’s team, down. 

They wouldn’t be left to die alone.

“Begin burn,” Iverson’s gruff voice over the comm and Shiro punched the sequence in one handed, felt the shift in his craft as the small thrusters fired and angled him for entry.

“Taka…” Ryou’s voice, soft and personal over the comm and for one horrifying, frozen breath, Shiro thought his brother was going to say goodbye or make some kind of stipulation about what to do if he didn’t come out. But then -

“You want me to let Adam know?”

Shiro felt his chest close up but he was shaking his head the second the question was asked.

“No.” Firm. "Not a whisper of this.“

He didn’t need that added weight on his shoulders. They were military, they were space explorers, they were the runners of the hairline edges of travel into the empty space that had no welcome place for frail human beings and their needs - and even though it had been that way since the beginning and it had never changed -

there were expectations that Adam had sometimes, that he laid on Shiro, limits to what he thought was acceptable risk and while Shiro could sympathize with that - he worried about Adam as well - there was a drag against him, when he felt the weight of Adam’s fear for him. He wouldn’t deny the other man the right to feel it. 

He just couldn’t carry himself, the Holt team and the weight of Adam’s fear right now. It was all he could do to balance his own.

"He’s going to kick your ass when you get back and he finds out,” Ryou’s voice was cheerful now, exactly what Shiro needed and he actually managed a bitten out laugh, surprising himself.

“I’ll bunk with you until it blows over. Make sure the couch doesn’t have engine parts on it this time.”

“I’ll even actually buy milk for the Cocoa Pops,” Ryou chimed and Shiro felt the way it steadied his soul. He didn’t need fear right now.

He needed faith.

“All right,” he pulled on his helmet and slid the radiation shield down over it. “Let’s do this.”

“God speed,” Iverson’s voice. And then there was a familiar beat in the speakers and Shiro flipped up the cover over the main thrusters to the sound of his twin pumping out ‘Danger Zone’ and sent the Andromache blasting into the radiation belt.

The ship dove through the radiation like a falling star and Shiro kept the levels on the shields in the corner of his vision. Once they were gone - he was dead.

Ahead, the screen was hazy, blurred with detritus and the warp of the physical manifestation of the radiation on the cosmic dust and gas that collected around Io. Commander Holt’s ship had lost contact when it had entered the torus, the same way Shiro knew he was invisible now back on Earth and to the waiting Control Room. He had the trajectory the damaged ship had entered at though and he burned fast and hot down the line of it, making changes to catch the currents that would have overwhelmed and tugged it along. Under his hands the stick vibrated and Shiro input minor adjustments to the shields and fuel burn with his free hand, codes and routes memorized so he could keep his eyes on the screen in front of him. Searching for the foreign glint of the extract vessel. If its hull had been breached - if its shielding had failed -

then they were already dead and this was for nothing.

Shiro wasn’t going to let that happen. There was no way he could stop it, he knew that and yet -

he wasn’t going to let that happen.

Not on his watch.

“Come on,” he muttered it low under his breath. "Come on, sweetheart. Where are you? Show me where you are.“

There! A dark movement against the ruined sky. He focused on it, hand tightening on the stick. Had he seen the extract craft or was he -

but no!

There is was again. 

"Found you,” he whispered his relief and leaned the Andromache into her dropping fall after it. The ship responded like a dream and Shiro felt the familiar mesh. As if they were one and the same, the ship - and him. Falling through space, her wings become his, the stick in his hand feeding energy up into his own chest. The radiation tried to push against them as they left its flow and he spun the Andromache down, spinning her like a falling dime to give the shields as much protection as he could, catching the updrafts and slipping under them instinctively, wings rocking in controlled lift and dip as he chased the extract craft

caught the current that had caught the lost ship

burned thrust and burst forward.

He had no way to communicate. The radiation was so strong here, so heavy, that it interfered with all their communication. Anything outside the protected ship was ruined. Shiro wasn’t sure how he was going to signal Commander Holt that he was there - but even as he watched the fast approaching bulk of the extract craft -

he watched the landing lights on it flick off. Flick on. Flick off. Flick on. 

And for the first time he could breathe. Swallow. And his grin stretched tight and lean. 

They’d been waiting for him. He wasn’t too late.

Connecting the ships was the next challenge. They weren’t made to dock with each other but the team back on Earth had figured out a way it might work. 

It had to. It was the only option they had. Shiro would have to open his cargo hold and then touch down over the extract vessel’s smaller pressure tube. He’d have to ride it hard and tight. Because his shielding was all that would stand between the crew as they shifted from their ruined vessel to his and the entire fury of the Io’s radiation. If he let the ships part even the little bit, anyone caught between would be fried. 

So he wouldn’t let himself fail.

A few flicks to toggles as he approached, able to see in detail now how devastating the damage to the other vessel was. Shiro sealed off his cabin - and then he swung open his cargo doors. The pressure release and change in aerodynamics rolled the Andromache but Shiro had known it would and he’d angled her already, riding the momentum instead of fighting it and bringing him in line with the other ship’s port side. This was the delicate part and his touch was barely there, slow shifts to the stick, coaxing it gently. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the reading on one of the shields spike but there was nothing he could do about that and he forced his focus onto the merging ships. The timer on his dash was counting down how much longer he had before all his shields failed.

How much longer he could stay in the plasma torus before he died. He had to bite down on the urge to rush.

“Patience yields focus.” A mantra that steadied him, solidified in the core of him. His grandfather’s family motto. As old as the Shirogane family mon. Shiro let the air in his lungs out slow and didn’t blink as he brought the Andromache home to nest on top of the other vessel with a final clang.

“Come on.”

He couldn’t leave his seat to signal Sam and the rest of his crew. They had to intuit this themselves. Had to know when it was sealed. Had to make the opening and transition themselves into the secondary cargo hold and seal it before he could lift away. And Shiro had never felt his nerves stringing so tight as he sat there, helpless and unable to tell if it was happening or not.

“Come on…..”

In his head he imagined the way it would sound. The clang of the port door being forced open, the whisper of bodies passing from the dead ship to the hope of the Andromache. Under his hand, she shifted, the radiation trying to lift her from the other ship and Shiro edged the stick to balance it. Keep her in place. Keep her steady, Shirogane. There are people counting on you. If you mess up, even a little, even for a second, they die. Focus and ride this storm. You know how. The Andromache shuddered and another of her shields flared warning colors at him - but she held steady.

Just as Ryou had promised she would.

“….here! We’re - ….. - Shiro!”

“Sam!” the voice had crackled over his helmet and only Shiro’s training kept him from the surprise twitch that would have ruined his stick handling. “Are you in? Is everyone onboard?”

“Affir- …. second bay…. - ” Shiro hesitated. The third shield flared its warning at him. If he lifted too early, his impatience would kill anyone left in the main cargo hold.

“Clarify. Sam - clarify. Are we clear for go?”

“Yes! - unch it!”

The laugh bit out of him, the relief washing through him so strongly he felt the rush of it, all adrenaline and Shiro immediately gave the Andromache her head, lifting her off and away on a curve from the other vessel. He had one moment to watch it, nothing but an empty coffin now, falling away into the static and radiation whirls below, headed for Io’s surface, and then he was closing the loading doors and setting Andromache racing for the nearest edge to the Line.

Where he thought the nearest edge of the Line was.

Sensors were useless in Io’s torus. The ship had lost track of itself the moment it had entered. This was the impossible part. Finding your way out of the plasma cloud before the shields failed and everyone died. This was the part Shiro didn’t need Adam to hear about until it was over. The part where he flew himself, and his crew, blind and on instinct out of the torus. Shiro shut his eyes and focused.

Outside - out there - somewhere deep and dark - the stars were calling him.

They had always called him.

He had always heard them.

And now he followed them out of swirling hell as warning lights painted the interior of his cockpit in reds and yellows and alarms he couldn’t hear inside his helmet blared their warnings. Ryou had bought him all the time he could -

now it was up to Shiro and the Andromache to find his calling stars before it was too late.

Under his hands, the ship began to shudder and even behind his closed eyelids Shiro could see the flashing warning lights from the failing shields. He took the stick on both hands, one last flick to the toggle that sent the thrusters into overburn and focused. Somewhere deep inside him, somewhere that was just his, just him, untouched and vast, a low, slow deep well of peace started to rise, rumbling low and vibrating through his chest, his bones. The Andromache shuddered once and then again even harder as she fought the currents of the plasma torus and Io’s pull, soaring toward a spot Shiro expected there to be stars waiting for him. His sense of direction was good - but the call of the stars was instinctive and he followed it without hesitation, with full faith, with everything he had inside of him. Plunging forward through the Ring, rising like a star, burning brighter either toward his end or his start.

Behind his eyes, the flaring light stopped. Went solid red. He felt the Andromache jerk full body all the way down her length and groan like metal in pain. He opened his eyes to watch the end.

And saw stars suddenly flare to life across his screen -

 

He didn’t know what sound he must have made but it tore his throat and then the stars blurred as tears filled his eyes. One second. Two. And then, faint and tinny and cut through with bursts of static The Boys Are Back in Town faintly played across the comm at him through his helmet. Beamed all the way from a distant Earth, waiting, believing, he would rise to hear them. He coughed and it was tears and laughter and his hands shook when he lifted them to first check the air pressure through the blur of his helmet’s shield and then to take the helmet off and drop it next to him. Wiping hard at his eyes with the heels of his hands before forcing himself to focus, checking readings, readjusting his course setting, cutting the thrust.

“Commander Holt?” it came out thick but he thought that was all right as he toggled the comm to the second cargo bay. "Sam?“

The whoop was still broken up and shot through with static but the emotion behind it was unmistakable and more than just one voice was cheering. Shiro found himself grinning so hard it hurt.

"Command,” he switched the comm over to the open channel to Earth. "We’re back. Callipso team secure.“

The cheering and screaming from the control room was loud even over the speakers and Shiro made sure it was channeled back to Commander Holt’s team to hear as well. He found himself laughing and had to wipe his glove over his eyes and nose again.

"Ry?”

“THAT’S MY BROTHER!!!” Ryou screamed it over the comm. "I knew you could do it! Damn, Taka! Damn it to hell, that was amazing!! Get your ass back here so I can hug you!“

Shiro inhaled fully, feeling his lungs expand and the smile was so wide it was starting to make his cheeks hurt.

"Roger that. Andromache is inbound. Send up a tug to pick us up because I’m going to need some fuel.”

“Yeah! Hell yeah!” Ryou was half into a weird amalgamation of their twin talk and Garrison jargon he was so enthusiastic. His words were all Shiro needed in life at the moment as the comm spilled them over him: "Hell yeah you are! Tug already outbound. Welcome back, Andromache.

Welcome home.“


End file.
